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 Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days

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PostSubject: Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days   Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days I_icon_minitimeTue Jul 09, 2013 6:08 pm

http://rt.com/news/radiation-levels-soar-fukushima-839/

Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days
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Published time: July 09, 2013 13:28
Edited time: July 09, 2013 16:06
Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days Fukushima-2.si

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Accident, Ecology, Health, Japan, Nuclear, Tsunami
Levels of radioactive cesium-134 in a well at Fukushima nuclear power plant are up to 90 times higher than just three days ago, and may spread into the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, 10 applications to restart reactors under stricter rules have been received.
TEPCO, the company that operated the plant and is now in charge of the cleanup and decommissioning, said that cesium-134 levels in the well water were at 9,000 becquerels per liter, 150 times the legal level. While cesium-137 measured 18,000 becquerels, 200 times the permitted level.
Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years and the readings were some 85 times higher than they had been three days earlier.
These are the highest cesium levels found since the March 2011 disaster.
“It is unclear whether the radioactive water is leaking into the sea. After gathering needed data, we will conduct analyses,” a TEPCO official told the Japanese media.
Although the total levels of cesium collected on July 8 were far higher than those collected just three days earlier on July 5, levels of other radioactive materials, such as strontium, remained the same as three days ago.
“We do not know why only cesium levels have risen,” a TEPCO spokesman said.
The latest findings, just 25 meters from the Pacific Ocean, were made just a month after TEPCO detected cesium in the groundwater flowing from high ground fairly far from the sea into its destroyed plant.
The spike, along with discoveries of other radioactive elements like Tritium and Strontium, suggest that contaminated water is spreading towards the sea from the reactors, which are on higher ground.
It was reported in June that very high levels of strontium 90 were found in groundwater near the stricken plant, but TEPCO officials insisted that it had not leaked into the nearby ocean.
Engineers have been flushing water over the reactors for more than two years to keep them cool, but contaminated water has been building up at the rate of an Olympic sized swimming pool every week and TEPCO is running out of space to store it.
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PostSubject: Re: Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days   Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days I_icon_minitimeTue Jul 09, 2013 6:10 pm


  • http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/07/08/fukushima-watch-tritium-levels-soar-on-coast-at-fukushima-plant/

  • July 8, 2013, 8:20 PM

Fukushima Watch: Tritium Levels Soar on Coast at Fukushima Plant


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Japan Real Time HOME PAGE »
By Phred Dvorak
More than two years after the devastating accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. is seeing levels soar of a radioactive element called tritium.
Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days OB-TI161_fukush_D_20120612010149
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The problem spot is on the coastal side of the plant’s heavily damaged No. 2 reactor, one of the areas where Tepco regularly monitors groundwater to check for radioactive elements that may have leeched from the plant’s partly melted fuel cores and into the environment. In May, Tepco found that tritium levels in the groundwater there had suddenly risen to 17 times their December levels. Since then, Tepco has drilled more monitoring holes and stepped up measurements. They’ve found tritium levels are continuing to rise, with the latest readings, taken on July 5, some 20% higher than they were in May.
Before anyone panics, a step back.
Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen with a half life of around 12 years, which occurs naturally and is also produced in the process of nuclear fission. It tends to flow along with water — both in and out of human bodies, for instance — and so is thought to be less harmful than other radioactive elements, such as cesium, associated with nuclear plants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls it “one of the least dangerous of radionuclides.”
That said, the tritium level that Tepco measured on July 5 in one of its coastal monitoring wells near reactor No. 2 is ten times above Japan’s safety standard of 60,000 becquerels per liter, and rising. (A becquerel is a measure of how much radioactive energy is released per second.) That’s the highest such level the company has recorded since the accident.
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PostSubject: Re: Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days   Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days I_icon_minitimeTue Jul 09, 2013 6:39 pm

Spring go take a look at the 777 down in San Fran thread.
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PostSubject: Re: Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days   Radioactive cesium level soars 90-fold at Fukushima in just 3 days I_icon_minitime

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